


Wages and Sin

by Sidrisa



Category: Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, F/M, Waitress meets the 2 top of her life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-18 21:25:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12396540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sidrisa/pseuds/Sidrisa
Summary: It's your last customer, at your last table, on your last day of gainful employment. After this, you're gone, left with nothing but whatever tips you've earned for the day. Maybe it'll be enough to keep the lights on and the fridge full. But it likely won't. But still, you hate this place. You hate how it's made you dull and lazy. Gave you the illusion of protection while sucking you dry of dreams and motivation.No more. Not after tonight.You just need to get through this last table. This last customer.But *damn* what customer.





	Wages and Sin

You’d be fired for being drunk on the job. It’s a good damn thing you’ve already decided to quit.

You’re life’s pretty well in shambles, nothing is how you wish it to be. Not with your (dead) relationship, your (dead) mother, and certainly not with your (dead-end) career waiting tables.

And so this is your Last Table. After this single in a two-top is done, you’re done.

And as singles go, you could do worse.

He looks like a business man, dressed in black from his hair to his fingernails. He’s charming enough to make light small talk, but not so charming it’s Obvious. He’ll be easy, you think. He’s not overly familiar and not so impersonal you feel like a robot.

With the close, flattering cut of his suit and effortless way he orders your finest aged filet, you think you might, if the liquor doesn’t get the better of you, make out with a decent tip.

So you decide, or the liquor sloshing in your belly decides, you like him. (It wasn’t that much, really, just enough gin to take the edge off the insane decision you’re going to make when this is done. Just enough to take the edge off…no matter how considerable that edge is.)

Steaks come with soup or salad. He orders salad, you bring him soup too. 

“I don’t recall ordering this.” He objects.

“I know.” You stop yourself from calling him ‘baby’ like your mama would. Like she does whenever you hadn’t eaten enough or weren’t wearing enough scarves which, judging from the sharp cut of his cheek bones and impossibly pale complexion matching the swirling snow outside, he hasn’t and isn’t.

Besides, you’re a Professional, damn what the gin says.

“Lobster bisque ain’t mama’s gumbo but it’ll warm you. You look like you need it.” The gin says.

You hide your embarrassment and he chuckles the rest of it away acceding to the soup after your promise it won’t show up on his bill. As you retreat to the kitchens, something warmer than gin heats your cheeks and makes your fingertips tingle.

 When you return to check in on him, he’s sopping up the last of the bisque with a bit of bread and you, the gin in you, fixate utterly on the arc, dip, and swirl of his fingertips.

“You’re right. Perhaps it was good, or I’m hungrier than I thought, but the bisque was timely and excellent. What else are you hiding from me.”

You’re still half in your fantasy of being his black nail polish that you almost don’t hear him.

It’s  _not_  flirting. Gin takes everything and amplfies it by a factor of at least two.

He’s cute so add another 3.

But you’re still  _sure_  he’s not flirting. Him with that suit and that damn otherworldly accent, everything he says could be mistaken as a come on and you’re already inebriated so he’s not flippling flirting!

Still doesn’t stop the way you grind your teeth to keep from .

“Wine-ing…err wine? Want some wine?” you sputter.

He glosses over your gracelessness, determined, it seems, to make you worse. “What do you suggest, love?”

Mo-THER-FUCKER! This you’re Last Table, you can’t spontaneously combust before you collect this tip, roll your silverware, and cuss the shit outta your boss. Mama didn’t raise half measures. You right your hopeless face into a smile.

“What do you like?” You serve.

“Something dark, or course.” He returns, acing past your defenses, words lodging directly into your brain, heart, and other southerly places.

You’ve thrown hands for less. Men always think likening you to chocolate or mocha or various other brown hued sweets is the way into your heart or at least your pants, and you never hesitate to correct this error. You’re not a damn dessert. 

But for this man, this one time, you’d let him..

“Eating.” The gin betrays you.

"Beg pardon?”

“Eating…it’s a wine. Argentinian. Malbec. Glass? Bottle?”

He orders the glass.

From what you gather, he enjoys his fillet. You get a peak of his wrist as he works the knife across the meat thrilling you like some kind of Victorian lecher. You’ll remember how he likes his steak, medium rare, dash of salt, a bigger dash of pepper. It’s too bad you’ll never get the opportunity to put that memory to use.

Once this table is flipped, you’re gonna flip off your manager and walk out into the snow and heaven knows what. You’ll never see him again.

And he makes up for it by ordering dessert. Of course your Last Table would be a server’s dream trifecta of appetizer, entree, and dessert (WITH ALCOHOL!). Something your boss screamed at you to push every time even if you weren’t comfortable with it. 

Of course it’d end like this.

His devil’s delight chocolate cake does not come with a heaping dollop of vanilla bean ice cream but at this point, who gives a damn?

Watching this man swirl the cake in the melted cream, watching the way his eyes flutter when he takes a bites fills you with such unnameable joy as though you made this yourself and didn’t procure it half frozen and prepackaged from the freezer. You’ve never loved your job until tonight.

You’re drunk, not desperate, so you don’t scribble your number on the back of the check. Rather you thank him kindly and scurry back to the kitchens to watch him leave, enamored with the way he procures his own pen from his breast-pocket to sign.

You keep watch on the door, hoping for half a heartbeat he’ll come back in calling your name but when he doesn’t you say your goodbyes to petite Maria who makes the bread, stealing a roll for yourself. (And part of the reason WHY you’re quitting is that sonofabitch manager didn’t let you take a meal break. This sweet lump of butter and carbs is the only food you’ve eaten this shift that wasn’t the feast on the eyes that Man was.)

You square your shoulders and give your manager such a cuss the entire dining hall falls silent to hear it.

You leave, under threat of police, but not before tipping out your busser and bartender.

“You need it more than we do.” They say correctly, but you leave their due anyway.

You keep his credit car slip in your pocket, wishing to savor his handwriting on the way home, kicking yourself for not learning his name when you had his damn credit card in your hands.

The flimsy thermal paper grounds you. Keeps the gin and the dizzying madness that you just walked out on your only job from knocking you over in the snow.

He writes beautifully.

He writes elegantly.

He also didn’t leave a tip.

And just like that your world disappears, you disappear, or hope the snow piles up high enough to make you.

You were a damn fool to fall for any of it. (And the DAMNDEST fool for not checking your tips properly. Fuck! This is why you don’t drink at work.)

You exhale a sobbing sigh and watch it mist into steam and fly away on the breeze. You take one last look at the receipt, wishing your breath had the power to dissolve it and the memory of stingy ass fine ass man.

That stingy ass, fine ass man didn’t leave a tip. No.

But, you find something scrawled at the bottom of paper, just under your restaurant’s closing salutation and logo.

_20% is too paltry a tip for your princely service. I wish to pay you in full what I feel you’ve better earned.  
I’ll be waiting outside. Black Lexus. Be quick._

Headlights flash.

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a month ago. Forgot about it.  
> Read it again, decided it was worthy enough to bring here.


End file.
